By Wang Ying (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-11-19 07:40

Beijing has tightened security at veterinary laboratories under an anti-terror program intended to ensure bio-safety during the 2008 Olympic Games.

The city's 27 veterinary laboratories signed guarantees with the Beijing Agriculture Bureau on Saturday promising not to allow any leaks of disease-causing microorganisms during the Games, the Beijing Youth Daily reported Sunday.

The bureau has urged every lab to establish its own bio-safety management committee by this Sunday.

Monthly safety inspections of veterinary labs will begin this month to expose any loopholes in safety management.

Li Quanlu, director of the Beijing Animal Health Supervision Institute, said the campaign is also aimed at increasing public awareness of biological terrorism to fight against biological weapons and the leakage of harmful bacteria, fungi, viruses and toxins.

The city will improve supervision of the deadly microorganisms that cause animal diseases and crack down on the unauthorized preservation, use and transport of such microorganisms, Li said.

By the end of this month, the authorities will post standardized signs at veterinary labs to raise public awareness of bio-safety and bio-disaster prevention.

"Citizens are encouraged to report bio-safety violations to the authorities," Li said.

The authorities passed a regulation in late 2004 to tighten management of biological laboratories in response to an incident earlier that year in which two people were infected with the SARS virus at a lab operated by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The regulation graded the country's pathogenic microbe labs into four levels.

The first and second grades are for labs forbidden to conduct experiments on risky pathogenic microbes, which can cause severe and contagious diseases in humans and animals.

The third and fourth grade labs are allowed to conduct experiments on such diseases after securing a special certificate from the health and veterinary administrations.

A national standard on laboratory bio-safety was established in 2004 by the Standardization Administration of China and the Certification and Accreditation Administration of China to specify the general requirements of laboratory bio-safety.